Set in a scorched, broken future in the year 2042, where the United States has collapsed beneath the weight of water wars, famine, and a devastating plague known as “the Rot,” Protector is a high-energy post-apocalyptic action ride. With widespread infertility making children an extreme rarity, humanity’s future hangs by a thread. The story zeroes in on Nikki (Milla Jovovich), a former soldier who thought she had left violence behind to raise her daughter, Chloe (Isabel Myers). That fragile peace is shattered when Nikki wakes up in an abandoned factory and finds that Chloe has been abducted. Thrust back into the criminal underworld and hunted by corrupt military forces led by Colonel Joseph Lavelle (Matthew Modine), Nikki must tear through warlords, desert highways and motorized death squads to rescue her child, uncovering a sinister plot where surviving children are hunted for scientific experiments to reverse global infertility. Along the way, her path intersects with Key, a former dirt-jousting champion connected to a protected Native American reservation holding the world’s last clean natural water source.
Directed by Adrian Grunberg (Rambo: Last Blood), this feels way too dark — I mean, you can barely see; I’m fine with how gritty it is — but it reminds me that Jovovich might be just as close to today’s Kinski as Nicholas Cage. She’s out there all the time, making these action movies, and we never even consider her. Then, this drops a wild twist on you at the end, and you’ll be like me, thinking, “Could we get more of Milla shooting people, because that’s why I watched this?”
I know I’m going to watch anything she’s in, but I wish I could like it more.
You can get this from Deep Discount.
